Ukrainian Civil War
I hate to be a guy that pees all over some nostalgic anti-Russian sentiment, but the new president in the Ukraine was not democratically-elected. Remember, he just took power via a coup? And the United States just violated its own official policy again by recognizing the new coup-installed leader, as we did in Syria only a year ago. I'm sure we had no role in this plot as we played no role in Syria, Libya, Egypt, Venezuela, Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Tibet, Cuba, South Vietnam, Brazil, Greece, Argentina, Afghanistan, Turkey, Nicaragua, Ghana, Angola, Poland, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, Cambodia, the Philippines, Haiti, Gaza, Somalia, and Iraq. Don't you just hate it when Russia butts its nose in where it doesn't belong?The rule of the now-exiled Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was certainly repressive, but the coup against him also seems to coincide with his decision to pull his country out of a pact with the European Union and strengthen its ties with Russia instead. It's going to be mighty embarrassing for the United States if the anti-Yanukovych conspirators turn out to be a collection of fascists and anti-Semites. The nationalist Svoboda Party, after all, is descendent of a Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera.
Good thing it's not the responsibility of the United States to solve this mess.
---
Slate's Amanda Hess is coming to the defense of Kim Novak, who appeared on stage at the Oscars Sunday twenty years after last appearing in a movie, and now having undergone extensive plastic surgery. Novak was the butt of a few jokes on Twitter evidently, and I confess that I found her appearance a little unsettling myself, yet I'm not sure exactly who Hess is defending Novak against. To me, it doesn't seem to be that male sexism is a direct perpetrator.
First of all, nobody of cultural consequence is making fun of Novak. You can find an offensive Tweet or two on virtually any subject that exists. I'm not sure that obscure comedian Rob Delaney is worth so much of our energy. And nobody is really making fun of Novak's age. It's just that the practice of plastic surgery, to some of us, is insanely hubristic at its very core, and perhaps even a worthy target of comedy. (Also of note at this time: everything is a worthy target of comedy.) There were no jokes after the telecast about the physical appearance of Sally Field, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Bette Midler, June Squibb (older than Novak), or even Goldie Hawn, whose excessive number of surgeries clearly rivals that of Novak's.
I thought Ellen DeGeneres' joke about Liza Minnelli looking like a man came the closest to being a cheap shot, and wasn't even funny, but here we have evidence of a separate double standard I've detected-- one that is gender-based. Last year's host, Seth MacFarlane, was universally scolded for what was referred to as a "sophomoric" and "sexist" performance mainly because he fronted a musical dance number called "We Saw Your Boobs," with lyrics referencing famous actresses' nude scenes on film. To me, that's pretty mild stuff, at least on the same par with DeGeneres' joke. Fortunately they're all just jokes. But some people are allowed to tell them, and others aren't.
You could not find an entertainment blog last year that didn't pillory MacFarlane. They had already made up their minds about him, and he flaunted their dislike by singing that song. Yet the same writers fall over themselves campaigning for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to host the Oscars. I love Fey even beyond our deaths, but her TV show, 30 Rock, got away with murder because of a culture pass she gets from being a female feminist. (I use that phrase because I actually consider MacFarlane to be a satirist first, and a male feminist.) There was a joke near the end of the run of 30 Rock in which Kenneth the NBC page tells his boss (paraphrasing only a little here) that when he has a tour group of Asians, he always makes sure that they "accidentally" walk in on a blonde girl peeing. I find that to be a hilarious, culturally-inappropriate joke actually, but can you imagine how some desensitized viewers of that program would groan if the same joke was made on MacFarlane's animated program Family Guy?
It is so bizarre anyway that we get so up in arms over evaluating matinee idols by their looks.
.
Quote of the day: "Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them." James Baldwin
posted by CM @ 7:57 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home